Everything we know about the birth of Jesus comes to us from either the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of Luke. Lukeâ€™s gospel, with its concern for the poor and marginalized, tells of the angels who appeared to poor shepherds to announce the birth of the Saviour in an animal feed stall. Matthew, with his focus on the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, tells of the astrologers from the East who see in the conjunction of the heavens that the long-awaited Messiah of Israel has been born.

But Mark and John have no such stories. Markâ€™s Gospel begins with Jesus, already a man grown, coming to John the Baptist to be immersed in the Jordan. Jesusâ€™ origins are of little interest in Markâ€™s telling. We hear nothing of who he is or where he came from beyond the mere fact that he was from Nazareth in Galilee. Even the story of his birth in Bethlehem, so important to both Matthew and Luke, is of no interest to Mark. Mark simply announces in the first sentence that Jesus Christ is the Son of Godâ€”and then Jesus simply arrives on the scene and sets rapidly to work. Markâ€™s intention is to lead us to conclude for ourselves, little by little, by his recounting of the events of Jesusâ€™s life, that he is, indeed, The Son of God. But just what this means is a mystery. A mystery, by the way, that the disciples are not clever enough to grasp. But Mark makes it very clear, by this bold declaration in the very beginning, that he has higher hopes for his readers, and that they, at least, are capable of Â grasping just what it means to proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God.

The Gospel of John also does not contain a birth narrative and it also makes no reference to Bethlehem. But rather than one rather short, bald declaration, as in Marksâ€™ opening sentence, John begins with 18 gorgeous verses that are profoundly rich and deep both as poetry and as theology.

Â John wants us to realize that he has no birth narrative because he is telling a story even more incredible that the one Luke or Matthew tell. Johnâ€™s narrative is not about a particular baby who was born at a particular time and place, and the events that surrounded his birth, and what people made of them. The story John wants to tell is not at all about the birth of a holy man, and not even about the birth of the son of god in the way Johnâ€™s world understood such an idea. After all, Augustus Caesar, the emperor when Jesus was born was also called â€œthe son of god.â€ In fact, the Roman coin that was given Jesus when he asked to see whose image was on it in his famous â€œRender unto Caesarâ€¦â€ teaching was probably a coin with the face of Augustus on one side andÂ â€œdivi filiusâ€â€”â€œSon of Godâ€â€”on the other.

John wants to launch a far higher claim than this. He sets out a direct challenge to the power and prestige of the most powerful people in the world, the emperors of Rome. He claims this Jesus is not a mere Son of God as declared by the Roman Senate, as Caesar is, but the active principle that brought the universe and all that is in it into being. This is the story of the coming down into the world of Godâ€™s word, Godâ€™s wisdom, Godâ€™s agentâ€”uncreated, coeternal, an endless participant in the divine life itself. And John is seeking words of enough beauty and power and majesty to convey that astonishing fact. Â

So he starts his Gospel with the opening words of Genesis: â€œIn the beginningâ€¦â€

Creation began with a Word: â€œLet there be light.â€Â John wants us to understand that there was never a time when Christ did not exist. Just as a word spoken cannot separated from its speaker, in the same way Christ is inseparable from God. John does not even claim that Christ came into being before the foundation of the world. John is claiming that his gospel is the story of how God, the God who brought everything that exists into being with a Word, came to enter our world as one of us. John is claiming that in this man Jesus, God became flesh. Baby flesh. Boy flesh. Man flesh.

And as flesh, subject to all the perils and humiliations of every other human beingâ€”but filled with the divine light, so that the deepest, darkest, most impenetrable places of the world were shot through and through with light by his very entrance among us.

John wants us to understand that in this arrival among us is contained the answer to all the mysteries of existence: Â the meaning of the universe, the purpose of human history, the God-ordained solution for the puzzle of evil. In this majestic prologue to his gospel, John is showing us the path in the wilderness, the light in the darkness, the love that seeks out each and every one of us, a love that brought us into being, nurtures us, and will not willingly ever let us go.Â

And John is also trying to stir us into full wakefulness. Â He wants us to understand what it means to say that God entered the world and dwelt among us as one of us. For by so doing, every aspect of human life was taken into the life of God, and made holy and sanctified. Nothing human is left outside, so that in him and through him, heaven and earth are completely reconciled. As the Eastern Orthodox like to say, â€œGod became human so that we might become divine.â€

Â That is why right here, in this beautiful prologue of Johnâ€™s, an astonishing promise is made: in and through the coming of the son of God, we are all given the capacity to become sons and daughters of God. Since the beginning of creation, through the whole story of the people of Israel, God has been working to save and bless the human race. And now comes this most decisive event: the Incarnation. God made flesh.

And this is not something that took place back then, in the distant past. John wants us to see that it goes on. God was with us 2000 years ago, and God was with us 1500 years ago, and God was with us 1000 years ago and God was with us 500 years ago, and God is with us today. Todayâ€”just as God was thenâ€”God is with us. And todayâ€”just as God did thenâ€”God dwells among us, and todayâ€”just as we did thenâ€”the human race Â receives the gift of the embodied light, the light that casts out all darkness, and grants to us Â the grace and truth, that, in the beginning, and from the beginning God intended for us, as Godâ€™s beloved daughters and sons.

Earlier this week I was at a meeting with other clergy and the facilitator asked us if we had a favourite gospel. I had never thought about the question in quite that way before, but I realized that I did, and that itâ€™s Luke.Â

Like a kaleidoscope, each of the gospels shifts the same elements to give us a different impression of Jesus and his mission and ministry, but no other gospel is as good at reminding the reader of Jesusâ€™ special concern for the poor, women, children, lepers, beggars, Samaritans. Much of what we call Lukeâ€™s special material is concerned with stories of Jesus and the marginalized and outcast.

This story of the healing of the ten lepers is an example of Lukeâ€™s special material–this story simply would not be known to us if Luke had not included it. And in this case it involves two kinds of marginal figures–lepers and Samaritans. Or, more specifically, a leprous Samaritan.

When we think of leprosy, which we probably rarely do, we think of modern leprosy, which doctors call Hansenâ€™s disease. A white patch appears on the skin and spreads until the suffererâ€™s fingers, noses and toes drop off.Â But this not what the ancients knew as leprosy. Hansenâ€™s disease appears to have been unknown in the ancient world. Skeletons of ancient Israelites show no evidence of the grotesque twisting of the bones that go with modern leprosy until well after New Testament times. And there are no descriptions in the Bible of the rotting limbs and deformed faces that are characteristic of Hansenâ€™s disease. In the ancient world, leprosy was any kind of skin disease that did not begin to heal in a week or two. It might be something highly contagious, like ringworm, but it could also be psoriasis or eczema.Â Even vitiligo, in which a dark skinned person develops white patches, would have been considered leprosy until the white patches covered the entire body, at which point the person would once again be seen as clean.

While you were leprous, you could not live with family or friends, and had no part in the life of the community. You had to live on the margins of the human world, permitted only the company of others like yourself–and alone if needs be. And you had to call out â€œUnclean, unclean!â€ to warn others to keep their distance.

For leprosy marked its victims as both spiritually and physically unclean. Under Jewish law, only if you could present yourself to a priest with unblemished skin could you be restored to family and friends, and to a right relationship with God.

No wonder, then, that the ten lepers pleaded with Jesus to be healed!

Notice that Luke does not tell us exactly what happened. Jesus does not touch the lepers, and seemingly they were not instantly cured.Â Instead, they appear to have been told to go to the priests to present themselves as clean and although nothing seemed to have changed, they trusted enough to go obediently off to do so. And as they trotted off, they found that they had indeed been made clean.

We can well imagine the gladness that gave wings to their feet as they hurried off. At last they could return to normal lives, to their families, to worship in the Temple.

But one, a Samaritan, turned back to give thanks, as extravagantly as possible. He shouted praises to God, threw himself at Jesusâ€™ feet and to thanked him with his whole heart.

Jesus looks at him and then asks, very dryly â€œThe other nine–where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?â€

And then Jesus says something a little surprising: â€œGet up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.â€

â€œYour faith has made you wellâ€¦â€ But wait–isnâ€™t the Samaritan already well?

Well, yes. He was cured of leprosy. But the word Jesus uses here can be translated in one of two ways: as â€œwellâ€ or as â€œsaved.â€

This is a cure beyond the physical healing, even beyond restoration to family, friends and community. This is a restoration to a right relationship with God by one who was seen as, to all purposes, outside that possibility. For the other 9 lepers were, apparently, Jews. This last is a Samaritanâ€”who is, for a good Jew, at best, a heretic and at worse a follower of a false religion. You could not go much lower on the social scale in Jesusâ€™ world than to be a Samaritan with leprosy.

And even if he is no longer a leper, as a Samaritan, he is still the despised one who lives on the margins.

And yet he is not only healed, but saved.

And why?

Simply because he came back to give thanks.

But note thatÂ this is not about sending a polite thank you note. This is about being passionately grateful to God. Clearly it is the offering of thanksgiving with a heart fully and joyfully open towards God that allows God to work in and through us, and to heal and strengthen and preserve us. To, in short, save us.

All ten lepers had been afflicted with a condition, that, in their time and place, made them outcasts because they were seen as spiritually and physically unclean. Nine of them settled for going back to their old life and old ways, physically healed. The tenth was healed both physically and spirituallyâ€”his inner and his outer life were made one. He became whole.

Luke wants us to understand that salvation is not a matter of who we are, or how the world sees and judges us. He was always very concerned that those who might feel despised or forgotten or of no worth understand that they are of infinite worth to God. And he wants each of us, as well, to recognize all the good things, large and small, Â that come into our lives through the hand of God.

We are invited to offer in response what we call in the Eucharist the â€œsacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.â€ And thereby to become whole and joy-filled persons.

A few weeks ago we heard the rather disturbing parable of the dishonest manager, in which we had to ask what Jesus meant when he said to make friends by means of dishonest wealth. Was Jesus telling us to cheat or to steal? How were we to understand that parable in light of what we know about Jesus?

Today we hear another of Jesusâ€™ more confounding parables, in which Jesus seems to compare God to a corrupt and uncaring judge. As in the first parable, we have to struggle to find the Jesus we know in the midst of our surprise or even consternation at what he seems to be saying.Â

It seems clear that Jesus was seeking to shock his audience in telling these parables–he knew their effect, then and now. He is trying to startle his hearers, to force them out of what we might call their comfort zone in their thinking–and into a new and richer way of seeing God in relation to their prayer.

One of my favourite movies is the Anthony Hopkins/Debra Winger version of Shadowlands.Â Anthony Hopkins plays C. S. Lewis of Narnia fame–Jack to his friends. Lewis was an Oxford professor who lived from 1898-1963. Lewis spoke up for Christian faith in an intellectual environment that was indifferent and even hostile to religion. In fact Lewis was perhaps the greatest modern Christian apologist. In his books for adults, and in his BBC radio broadcasts, speaking tours and his Narnia books he defended and explained Christianity so that people of all ages could grasp its message.

Lewis was a quietly repressed man in many ways, and did not marry until late in his life. Oddly, he first married Joy Gresham, the American woman he loved, out of friendship, in a civil ceremony that would allow her to remain in England with her children. He did not regard it as a real marriage because a true marriage was before God, and this had only been in a registry office. They never consummated this marriage and told no one but Jackâ€™s brother, Warnie.

Lewis had a reputation as the man with the answers to lifeâ€™s tough questions. One of his books was called The Problem of Pain in which he wrote that â€œPain is Godâ€™s megaphone to rouse a deaf worldâ€–meaning by that that pain serves to get our attention fully focused on God. Lewis wrote: “While what we call ‘our own life’ remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him.â€ But this is a kind of abstract and bloodless way of talking about human suffering. After Joy was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer Lewis suddenly and painfully realized that he had fallen deeply in love with her. For weeks she hovered in agony between death and life and he was terrified that she would die before he could show her what she had come to mean to him. More than anything, he wanted to marry her, really marry her, before God and the world. And he knew that her death would cast him into an abyss of loneliness, for she was his soul mate, the love he had waited to find until he was nearly 60 years old.

Daily he rushes to the hospital, sitting at her bedside, watching the rictus of pain as it distorts her face, watching the doctor shake his head as he looks at the X-rays of Joyâ€™s diseased thigh bone, which had snapped, as Lewis says, â€œLike a frozen twig.â€ The only treatment known in the late 1950â€™s was radiation–and the cancer was so terribly advanced that hope was very frail for even a brief remission.

The Jack Lewis who was once able to write coolly and dispassionately that suffering is character-building, saying, â€œ…[W]hether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want, â€ finally knew what real suffering and real pain looked like. And he spent hours on his knees in the college chapel. There is a marvelous scene in the movie in which Anthony Hopkins comes out of the chapel, his face vulnerable, his eyes haunted. His old friend Harry, the college chaplain seeks to find some word of comfort, though he is almost comically uncomfortable in talking about feelings, or even faith, in this deeply intellectual all-male environment in which both cause deep embarrassment.

Harry says to the clearly-suffering Jack:Â â€œ[Others] can scoff, Jack, but I know how hard you’ve been praying; and now God is answering your prayers.â€

And Lewis replies, with the honesty of desperation: â€œThat’s not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God, it changes me.â€

And this is the nub of what Jesus is saying in this parable of the unjust judge. Â We may pray, as Jack Lewis did, with great sincerity for many years. But prayer can become rote, a form, almost a habit–or even disappear from our lives completely except as we follow along with the prayers on Sunday morning. Lewis did not even realize until he was praying with passionate intensity, day and night, praying against all reason for a miracle, just what prayer was and could be–how far into the arms of God prayer could push him.

And Jack got his miracle–for a time. For a year in the movie–and three years in real life–Joy Gresham experienced a remission that allowed them to consummate their love, to travel, to parent her two sons, to be loving companions. Jack suffered dreadfully after she died–he had to learn to pray his way through that as well–but the experience of praying through her first illness helped him finally to find his way back to God after her death.

Jesus wants us to realize that in this world, trouble will come–heartache and heartbreak, loss of all kinds, griefs and anxieties of all kinds. We must learn to weather them all, as best we can, and the way to prepare is to learn to rely on God. If the uncaring judge in the parable finally gives heed to the widow because she has pestered him to death, how much more will God, who isÂ Loving-Kindness Itself, listen to our cries? We should never doubt Godâ€™s power, or Godâ€™s goodness, or Godâ€™s willingness to carry us through all the trials and tribulations we may–will!–face in this world. But we can only seize this knowledge with assurance when we have learned to pray our way to this kind of radical trust.

And this is why it is so important to learn to pray with a whole heart. Indeed, the important question for Jesus is not whether we can trust God to hear our prayers, but this: â€œWhen the Son of of man comes, will there be faith on earth?â€Â In short–God will always hear our prayers, but will we continue to be prayerful? And that is why what Jack Lewis said is such a powerful measure of our own prayer life: â€œI pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesnâ€™t change God. It changes me.â€

Let our prayer be to find our way to that place where we are so open to God that prayer flows out of us, and we may be changed, and changed, and changed again, until we are, at last, what God hadÂ hoped we wouldÂ become all along.